The diocese of Rome expressed outrage Tuesday after a Nazi flag was draped over the coffin of a neo-fascist activist during her funeral at a church in the city.

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A photograph published by La Repubblica newspaper showed mourners outside the Santa Lucia church in the upmarket Prati neighborhood surrounding the coffin covered with a red flag adorned with a swastika.

It said Monday's funeral was held Alessia Augello, a member of Forza Nuova.

The neo-fascist group was blamed for violent protests in central Rome last October that targeted Prime Minister Mario Draghi's office and parliament.

La Repubblica said Augello, 44, died of deep vein thrombosis.

Members of Forza Nuova gave the fascist salute during the funeral, the newspaper wrote.

The diocese of Rome confirmed the coffin was draped in the Nazi flag, which it called a "horrendous symbol incompatible with Christianity," adding that some of those present shouted and made gestures relating to "this extremist ideology."

In a statement, it condemned the incident as "offensive and unacceptable."

Parish priest Alessandro Zenobbi expressed his "deep sadness, disappointment and dismay for what happened, while distancing ourselves from every word, gesture and symbol used outside the church."

Forza Nuova was created in 1997 in the tradition of the violent, extreme right-wing organizations active in Italy's so-called Years of Lead in the 1970s, and grew into a national force in 2008.

The group is openly neo-fascist. Its current leader, Roberto Fiore, a 62-year-old father to 11 children, was found guilty in the 1980s of subversive crime and founding a far-right armed political movement.

La Repubblica said police had been present at the funeral and were investigating.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

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Halina Birenbaum, an 89-year-old poet who lives in Israel, was quoted by Italy's Corriere della Sera daily as saying "this is more proof for me that evil will not win."

Birenbaum and the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum had threatened to boycott the 2019 Turin International Book Fair if it included the Altaforte publishing house, whose director is linked to the neo-fascist CasaPound party.

"We consider our presence incompatible with that of a neo-fascist publishing house that openly spreads a revisionist culture," read a letter signed by Birenbaum and others, including Piotr Cywinski, director of the state museum in Poland.

"In my life I suffered too much to be in the same place with people who propagate ideas that caused me to lose all of my family," Birenbaum, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and camps including Auschwitz and Majdanek, said in comments carried by state broadcaster RAI.

The head of the publishing house, Francesco Polacchi, has defined himself as a fascist. He has praised late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and said, "Anti-fascism is the true evil in this country."

Polacchi, who is also under investigation for promoting fascism, said he would sue. He called the ban an attack on the county's hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

Altaforte is publishing a book of interviews with Salvini that was to be presented at the fair.

Salvini also denounced the ban on Altaforte, saying there is a "minority on the left that claims the right to decide who can make music, who can do theater, who can publish books."

"Ideas are answered with other ideas, not with censorship," Salvini said.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella sent a message to the fair organizer saying that the values of Auschwitz survivor and writer Primo Levi, who was born in Turin, should "constitute the fundamental basis for a peaceful society and a respectful social coexistence."

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